IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology

eISSN: 2319-1163 | pISSN: 2321-7308

PE2A: PUBLIC ENCRYPTION WITH TWO ACK APPROACH TO

MITIGATE WORMHOLE ATTACK IN WSN
P. V. Khandare1, N. P. Kulkarni2
1

P. G. Scholar, Department of Information Technology, SKNCOE, Maharashtra, India

2
Professor, Department of Information Technology, SKNCOE, Maharashtra, India

Abstract
Wireless Sensor Network provides a solution for various applications like nuclear power plant, military. This type of application
required continuous monitoring. WSN is unprotected by various attacks; wormhole attack is one of among them. In this attack an
attacker able to receive a packet from one location and drop it into another location. We propose an algorithm to defend
wormhole attack, which is based on public key encryption and acknowledgement based. Proposed algorithm provides secure
communication and detects misbehaving nodes.

Index Terms: Wireless Sensor Network, wormhole Attack

--------------------------------------------------------------------***---------------------------------------------------------------------1. INTRODUCTION
Wireless Sensor Network (WSNs) consists of distributed
autonomous small devices that cooperatively monitor
environmental or physical conditions in remote and often
hostile environment. WSN provides solutions for various
applications like nuclear power plant, military applications
etc., but now a day WSN can be used in many daily uses,
including home automation, healthcare, traffic control or
environment monitoring. WSN has several distinguishable
characteristics that make them different from previous one
wireless network. WSN is generally used in unnoticed areas
and have a large number sensor node. These sensor nodes
have limited source of energy, memory, communication and
computation.
Security is another unique characteristic of WSN; it is an
important factor to provide secure and authenticated
communication between an authentic node in a critical
application. The Basic security services of WSN include
authentication, confidentiality, integrity, anonymity and
availability. Figure 1 shows the Wireless Sensor Network
architecture. It consists of sensor nodes, gateway sensor
node and sink or base station. WSN is caused by various
types of attacks. WSN based application required
continuous monitoring and real time response, hence to
provide security in WSN is challenging task.
Wormhole is one of the most severe attack in WSN. In
this attack, the goal of an attacker is to drop the packet
another location which is not a proper place. By using
wormhole attack, the attacker can reduce the performance of
the network. We propose an approach which is used to
defend wormhole attack in the network. Proposed
mechanism use encryption technique, decryption technique.
For our better communication we use the public key
cryptography technique and 2Ack scheme to find the
misbehaving nodes in the network. Data security is provided
by using encryption and decryption, the encryption is done
by using the public key of the sender and the public key of
the receiver. The decryption can be done with the help of the

public key of itself that is receiver and public key of the

sender. By taking the acknowledgement from two
successive nodes we can predict that secure communication
is done or not.

Sensor Node

Gateway Sensor Node

Base Station/ Sink

Fig-1: Wireless Sensor Network Architecture
We can say that about wormhole attack, an attacker is
transmitting data between two authorized nodes. An attacker
records a packet at one location transmit through and
releases to another location. By using accurate location
verification and clock synchronization we can prevent
wormhole attack [1, 6, 8, 11, 13, 15, 16]. Following figure
can illustrate the wormhole attack.

_______________________________________________________________________________________
Volume: 03 Issue: 01 | Jan-2014, Available @ http://www.ijret.org

102

IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology

eISSN: 2319-1163 | pISSN: 2321-7308

2.2 Security Goals or Security Services for Sensor

Network
The sensor network operates in an ad-hoc manner, due to
these security goals for this type of network cover both
those of traditional network and suited to ad-hoc sensor
network [2]. Security is an essential factor for every network
to defend again security attacks [3]. The security goals are
classified as primary goals and secondary goals. The
primary goals are also known as standard security goals.
Primary goals include authentication, confidentiality,
integrity, and availability (CIAA). The secondary goals
include data freshness, self-organization, secure localization
and time synchronization.. In order to have a secure system
the following criteria must be followed [2, 3, 4, 5].

Authentic Node
Attacker node

Security Goals

Wormhole Tunnel
Primary Goals

Secondary Goals

Fig-2: Illustration of wormhole attack.

2.

SENSOR

NODE

ARCHITECTURE

AND
Confidentiality

Data Freshness

Integrity

Self-Organization

SECURITY REQUIREMENTS
2.1 Sensor Node Architecture

Authentication

Availability

Sensor

Power

Microcontroller

Transceiver

Data Exchange

Fig-3: Sensor Node Architecture [1]

Verdonnel describes the sensor node device as the simplest
tool in WSN. It consists of elements like sensor, memory,
battery,
microcontroller
and
radio
tranreceiver.
Microcontroller is used to control all task. It is equipped
with the memory which is used to store environment sensed
data. Battery is energy source for the sensor node device.
Figure 3 explain the architecture of sensor node.

Secure Localization

Fig-4: Security Requirement for Sensor Network

Memory

Supply

Time
Synchronization

1) Authentication:
Authentication gives the consistently best performance of a
message identifying its original source [2]. WSN have large
amount of nodes in the network. The sensor node collects
sensitive data which help to take many decisions.
Authentication ensures that the received message is coming
from origin [4]. An attacker not only going to modify the
packet but also can change the whole packet stream by
adding additional packet. Due to this, the receiver should
have a decision making process to take decision for received
packet is came from authenticate node. During the
deployment of networks, authentication is required for many
administrative tasks; it allows a receiver to verify that
received data is coming from claiming sender. It can be
achieved through symmetric or asymmetric mechanisms. To
provide a secure communication in hostile environments, it
is challenging task to ensure authentication [2, 4].
2) Integrity:
WSN consist of a large number of nodes which
communicates with the help of certain communication
range. In this type of network adversaries may be present,

_______________________________________________________________________________________
Volume: 03 Issue: 01 | Jan-2014, Available @ http://www.ijret.org

103

IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology

hence during transmitting of data, data may be altered or

loss by adversaries [6]. Data integrity ensures that reliability
of data and it refers to the ability to confirm that message
has not been tampered with, altered or changes. Even if the
confidentiality of network measures, but there is a
possibility that data integrity has been compromised by
alterations [2]. The data integrity of the network disturbed, if
the attacker is present in the network and inject false data
and some undesirable conditions due to wireless channel
cause damage [4].
3) Data confidentiality :
Data confidentiality is important for communication in
WSN. WSN provides solutions for various types of
applications like military, industry etc. Hence data
confidentiality is important. An encryption is a standard
procedure or approach through which we can get data
confidentiality
during
communication
[6].
Data
confidentiality is an ability to keep secret communication
from an attacker so that communication via the sensor
network remains confidential. A sensor node should not
make known its data to its neighbor [2] because sensor node
stored highly sensitive data like military application [4].
There is need to build a secure channel in WSN for
communication purposes. Information of sensor node like
identity and its key must keep in encrypted format to protect
against various attacks [4].
4) Availability:
Data availability ensures whether a node has the ability
to use the resources and whether the network is available for
communication. The failure of the base station or cluster
head loss data availability. It is an important factor to
maintain an operational network [2].
The secondary goals or security services are as follows:
5) Data freshness:
Even if confidentiality and data integrity is maintained
but there is a need to ensure that the freshness of the each
message [2]. It gives an idea about data i.e. it is recent or
old. To ensure about data time stamp, a nonce or other time
related counter can be added, which gives idea that no old
messages or data replayed that is ensures about data
freshness [2, 6].
6) Self-Organization:
Each and every node in the network is independent and
flexible through to self-organizing and self-healing
according to different versatile environment or conditions.
The network should be self-organize to support multi-hop
routing and also self-organize to support the trust relation
among sensors. There is no particular infrastructure
available for sensor network, if there is no availability of
self-organization then damage cause it into an attack [2, 6].
7) Time Synchronization:
Most of application based on WSN depends upon some
form of time synchronization. Sensor node has a very
limited amount of energy, to save energy each sensor node

eISSN: 2319-1163 | pISSN: 2321-7308

radio may be turned off periodically. Some collaborative

type sensor network required group synchronization for
applications like tracking applications [2, 6].
8) Secure Localization:
Each sensor node must require location information
accurate and automatically [6]. The ability of sensor
network will depend on its ability to accurately and
automatically locate each sensor in the network. An attacker
can easily find unsecured location information by reporting
false signal strength, replaying signals [2].

3. RELATED WORK
Ali modirkhazeni, Sadeedeh Aghamahmoodi, Arsalan
Modirkhazeni and Nagrneh Niknejad [1] proposed approach
to motigate the wormhole attack in WSN. It find the
wormhole in network based on HELLO message and
RESPONSE message. It uses shared secret key for
communication purposes. Dhara butch and Devesh
Jinwala[7] proposed a method to detect wormhole in the
network. It is based on statistical analysis of sent and
received packets. It requires strong synchronization. Gunhee
Lee, Dong-Kyoo Kim, and Jungtaek Seo [13] proposed
method for mitigation of wormhole in wireless Ad-hoc
network. It uses two hope correctness test based on this they
mitigate the wormhole in network. Amar Rashid and Rabi
Mahapatra [16] proposed a technique to mitigate wormhole
in the wireless network. They detect wormhole based on
unknown pairwise key or unknown data transmission
channel in the network. Jakob Erikson, Shrikanth
V.Krisnamurty and Michalis Falutos proposed a TrueLink
protocol or defending wormhole in a wireless network.
TABLE- I
COUNTERMEASURES FOR WORMHOLE ATTACK
Sr.
No.
1

Author

Proposed
Scheme
Distributed
approach to
mitigate
wormhole attack
in Wireless
Sensor Network

Key Used

Gunhee Lee, Dong-Kyoo

and Jungtaek Seo[13]

Mitigate
the
wormhole attack
in wireless Adhoc network

Session Key

Amar Rashid and Rabi

Mahapatra[16]

Mobile Sink
Using Multiple
Channels to
Defend Against
Wormhole
Attacks in
Wireless Sensor
Networks

Use
polynomial
key
management
scheme

Jakob Erikson, Shrikanth

V. Krisnamurty and
Michalis Falutos

Proposed
Truelink
Protocol

None

Ali
modirkhazeni,Saeedeh
Aghamahmoodi,Arsalan
Modirkhazeniand
Naghmeh Niknejad[1]

Shared
secrete key

_______________________________________________________________________________________
Volume: 03 Issue: 01 | Jan-2014, Available @ http://www.ijret.org

104

IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology

Phuong Van Tran, Le

Xuan Hung, Young Koo
Lee, Sungyoung Lee,
Heejo [15]

Transmission
Time based
mechanism

Dhara Butch and Devesh

Jinwala[7]

Detection of
wormhole attack
in wireless
network based
on statistics of
sent and
received packet

None

eISSN: 2319-1163 | pISSN: 2321-7308

P (2Ack) = P (data send successfully)*P (probability

successful Acknowledgement)2
= P(s) 3

None

4. PROPOSED SYSTEM
Wireless Sensor Network consists of a number of sensor
node devices which are placed in unnoticed area. WSN is
unprotected from various attacks. Wormhole attack is one of
attack in WSN. In this attack, an attacker forms tunnel
which drop the packets to another location. Here we
proposed a mechanism which is used to defend a wormhole
attack in the network. It uses public key cryptography and
2Ack scheme. We can find the misbehaving nodes in the
network.

4.1 Mathematical Model

In [1], it is assumed that the attacker is not present at the
time of neighbour discovery, whereas if attackers are present
at time of neighbour discovery and able to get shared secret
key.
An attacker with m neighbors can send data with the identity
of each neighbor node with probability
P (A) = 1/m

(1)

Where, m is the number of real neighbors to attacking node

and not able to detect wormhole attack
In proposed algorithm we use public key cryptography as
opposed to shared secret key in existing algorithm. In
neighbor discovery phase every node lets the neighbor node
know its public key. Data Transmitted by a node is as
ED= E (KSprivate, E (KRpublic, D)) +E (KSprivate, Di)
Where

If acknowledgment received less than , Then node is the

attacker or misbehaving.

4.2 System
Each node in the network has a public key and a private key
and every node shared its public key at the time of neighbor
discovery. The proposed system is starting with every node,
every node sends HELLO message to all nodes. This
forwarded message has source address and its own public
key, which is broadcasted to all the nodes. To reply this
message, every authentic node sent their public key to that
node. Suppose when a node P want to send data to Q then P
encrypt the data with public key of Q and then again
encrypted with the help of the private key of sender that is P.
When Q receives the data then it can be decrypted with the
help of the public key of the sender that of P and its private
key of Q. For the encryption and the decryption purposes
we use the ECC algorithm. To check the successful
transmission we use 2Ack scheme that are we taking the
acknowledgement from two successive nodes in the
network. By using this technique we can easily find the
misbehaving or malicious node in the network. For the
consideration of two next authenticate node we find the path
to the base station. If the attacker able to receive messages
but he could not able to decrypt messages. With this
approach we consider that an attacker cannot be going to do
the acknowledgement spoofing attack. If R is successive
node then Q forward message to R. Node P is waiting for
acknowledgement from Q and R. If P received
acknowledgement from Q and R then data transmission is
done successfully is assumed by P. If P hasn't received
acknowledgement from Q and R then its considered that Q
is a misbehaving node. If acknowledgement is not coming
from R then it assumes that R is misbehaving node in the
network. Misbehaving node is nothing but node which has
only accepted the data but could not forward to next node.
Hence sensed data by other nodes cannot receive to base
station and loss of data is done. The 2Ack can be used when
the data is lost. The proposed approach provides secure
communication and finds misbehaving nodes.

ED Encryption of data

5. SIMULATION RESULT AND ANALYSIS

E is a public key encryption function
KSprivate is private key of sender node
KRpublic is public key of Receiving Node,
which eliminated pretending identity of the neighbor node
completely even if the attacker in present at time of
neighbor discovery

In the setup of Omnet++ simulation, 20 sensor nodes are

deployed in the area of 200mX200m.Figure7 shows
comparative results for both the systems at time t=200s.
Instead of shared secret keys in our proposed system we
are using public key cryptography for secure
communication. It results in an increase in the security of
the network.

In case of 2ACK,
Let probability of successful transmission as P(S),
so probability of successful reception of 2Ack is

_______________________________________________________________________________________
Volume: 03 Issue: 01 | Jan-2014, Available @ http://www.ijret.org

105

IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology

eISSN: 2319-1163 | pISSN: 2321-7308

Table II. Simulation Parameters

Parameter

Value

Simulation time

200 Sec

Simulation area

200 * 200 meter

Number of Nodes

20

Communication
Range

Default 50 meter
Fig.8: Throughput

CONCLUSIONS
To provide a security in WSN is a challenging task. Here
we implement the system to mitigate the wormhole attack in
WSN called public key encryption and 2ACK based
approach. Our proposed approach provides secure
communication. The ratio of proposed approach for received
packet is more than the existing system. Using our approach
we mitigate wormhole attack in WSN. If this approach is
used for WSN then secure communication will be possible.

REFERENCES
Fig.5 :False packet detected

Fig.6 : Packet Delivery ratio

Fig.7 :Energy consumtion in a network

[1] Ali modirkhazeni, Saeedeh Aghamahamoodi, Asarlan

Modirkhazeni and Naghmeh Niknejad,Distributed
Approach To Mitigate Wormhole Attack in Wireless
Sensor Network ,2011IEEE , page no. 122-128
[2] Dr. G. Padmavati, Mrs. Shanmungapriya, A survey of
attacks, Security Mechanism and challenges in
Wireless Sensor Network, International Journal of
Computer Science and Information Security (IJCSIS),
volume 4 no. 1 & 2, 2009, ISSN 1947-5500, Page no.
291-296
[3] Hind Annahidh, Soha S. Zaghul, A Survey on
Security Solutions in Wireless Sensor Network, ISBN:
978-0-9853483, Page no. 94-98
[4] Dr. Banta Singh Jangra, Vijeta Kumavat, A Survey
on Security Mechanisms and Attacks in Wireless
Sensor Network, International Journal of Engineering
and Innovative Technology (IJEIT), Volume 2, Issue
3, September 2012, Page no. 291-296
[5] Yang Wang, Garhan Attebary, Burav Ramamurty, A
Survey of Security Issues in Wireless Sensor Network,
IEEE Communications Survey and Tutorials, 2 nd
quarter 2006, Volume 8, No.2-23.
[6] P. Mohanty, S. Panigrahi, N. Sarma, S. Satapathy,
Security issues inWireless sensor Network Data
gathering Protocols: A Survey , Journal of
Theoratical and Applied Infrormation Technology,
2005-2010 JATIT, Page no. 14-27
[7] Dhara Buch, Devesh Jinwala Detection of wormhole
attack in Wireless Sensor, Proc of international

_______________________________________________________________________________________
Volume: 03 Issue: 01 | Jan-2014, Available @ http://www.ijret.org

106

IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

[16]

[17]

eISSN: 2319-1163 | pISSN: 2321-7308

conference on Advances in Recent Technologies In

communication computing 2011, Page no. 7-14
Al-Sakib Khan Pathan, Hyung Woo Lee Choong
Seon Hong, Security In Wireless Sensor Networks :
Issues & Challenges Feb 20-22, 2006 ICACT 2006 ,
ISBN 89-5519-129-4, Page no. 1043-1048R. E.
Sorace, V. S. Reinhardt, and S. A. Vaughn, Highspeed digital-to-RF converter, U.S. Patent 5 668 842,
Sept. 16, 1997.
Xiaujiang Dv, Hsiao-HWACHEN, Security In a
Wireless Sensor Network , IEEE Wireless
Communication, August 2008, Page no. 60-66
Abhishek Jain, Kamal Kant, M. R. Tripathy, Security
Solutions For Wireless Sensor Networks Second
International Conference In Advanced Computing and
Communication Technologies, 2012 IEEE, Page no.
430-433
Sanzgiri , Kimaya, A Secure Routing Protocol For
Ad Hoc Networks ,2002, 10th IEEE International
Conference, Page no. 78-87
Gunhee Lee, Dong-kyoo Kim, Jungtaek Seo, An
Approach To Mitigate Wormhole Attack In Wireless
Ad Hoc Networks,International Conference On
Information Security & Assurance, 2008 IEEE, Page
no. 220-225.
Marianne A. Azer, Skeriff M.El-kassas, Magdy S. Elsoudani, An Innovative Approach For Wormhole
Attack Detection & Prevention In Wireless Adhoc
Networks, 2010 IEEE
Amar Rasheed, Rabi Mahapatra, Mobile Sink Using
Multiple Channels to Defend Against Wormhole
Attacks In Wireless Sensor Networks ,2009 IEEE,
Page no. 216-222
Phoung Van Tran, Le Xuan Hung, Young-Koo Lee,
Sungyoun Lee, Heejo Lee, TTM: An Efficient
Mechanisms To Detect Wormhole Attacks In Wireless
Adhoc Networks 2007IEEE
Vijaya K., Secure 2ACK routing protocol in Mobile
Ad Hoc Networks,TENCON 2008-2008 IEEE Region
10 conference, Page no. 1-7
P. V. Khandare, Prof. N. P. Kulkarni Public Key
Encryption and 2Ack Based Approach to Defend
Wormhole Attack , International Journal of Computer
Trends and Technology, Volume 4 issue 3-2013, Page
no.247-252

_______________________________________________________________________________________
Volume: 03 Issue: 01 | Jan-2014, Available @ http://www.ijret.org

107